NAIA new teams and faces made tournament a success

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LEWISTON, ID - With the 2013 Avista NAIA World Series now over, the teams have gone home, the fans are back to work and baseball is done in the LC Valley for awhile.

The week after the end of the 2013 Avista NAIA World Series is a somber one. No more weekend baseball, no more rooting for the home team. No more excessive amounts of hot dogs. Well, that last one's debatable. The most important thing is that this year's series was once again an overwhelming success.

"I think this year was one of the best year's we've had so far," said Assistant Athletic Director Brooke Cushman. "We had new teams, teams that had never been here. So it was great for us as the tournament to have new fresh faces."

And as we have discussed before, none of it could have been possible without the community and the volunteers.

"Our volunteers are great," said Cushman. "We had over 500 people come out and volunteer for over 700 positions and I was talking with the volunteer coordinator and I don't think we had any issues this year!"

Anything you have learned from this series that you will bring to next year?

"It's always a learning experience and like I said earlier the one thing I can't control is the weather," said Cushman. "So any time we can improve on anything else we're always trying to do that."

As for this year's Warrior team, LCSC Athletic Director Gary Picone was impressed with what Head Coach Jeremiah Robbins did in his first year.

"He's done a great job entrenching himself as the head coach here," said Picone. "He's the right guy, he'll do a great job, he's working already today. Just the kind of guy he is, an everyday guy who's really committed to the program and really committed to the players and I think you can see that in how they performed."

Meanwhile, coach Robbins is ready for next season to start already.

"The main thing is, I've got it in my blood now, I've got the taste of that world series," said Robbins. "We were really close and that's a really addictive feeling. I wanna' be back in there."

"I think it was one more chapter in a great story for baseball tournaments here in Lewiston and we're looking forward to 2014," said Picone.

As are we. See you all at the ball park in a few months. For those of you still looking to get your baseball fix, there's always the Mariners..but so far, they haven't been winning as much as the Warriors did this year.